PERFORMANCE-CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ANAEROBIC BAFFLED REACTOR

An anaerobic sludge blanket process, termed the anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR), has been developed and shows promise for industrial wastewater treatment. It combines the advantages of high stability and reliability with a high void volume. The risk of clogging and sludge bed expansion with resulting high microbial losses is reduced and there is no need for special gas collection or biological solids separation systems. Organic loadings as high as 36 g COD 1** minus **1 day** minus **1 have been achieved with COD removal rates of more than 24 g COD 1** minus **1 day** minus **1 and methane production rates exceeding 6 volumes per day per unit volume of reactor. The hypothesis, that the ABR may be adequately modeled as a fixed-film reactor, has been supported. Therefore, a unified approach, based on fundamentals of bacterial kinetics and mass transport, appears useful for modeling this and similar systems. Pilot plant studies are necessary to determine the scaling factors of the system as well as the overall efficiency and costs.